


Night terrors

by zanderskyward



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, I wrote this 5 months ago for a tumblr ask so might as well post it here i guess, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 15:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11489769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanderskyward/pseuds/zanderskyward
Summary: Levi experiences terrifying night terrors that transform into waking nightmares. He ends up in the psycho ward, believing he's going insane until he meets a certain someone during the group therapy sessions.





	Night terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Posted in tumblr as well: http://zanderskyward.tumblr.com/post/156953008778/could-you-maybe-write-something-about-levi

Levi thought that was the end of him.

After trying to jump from the balcony of Farlan’s flat and scaring the life out of him, his friend had finally brought him to the hospital to get help.

It had always been like that. Levi had always had those dreams, the kind of nightmares a child should never have, but if they had been few and sporadic during his childhood, they had grown stronger and attacked him more often than not in his adulthood. Since turning 30, his monsters had transformed into hallucinations and every time he woke from a dream, panting and drenched in sweat, the demons followed him until he could remember enough to turn on the lights. Sometimes he gets violent, and other times he’s so terrified he just lays on the bed for hours until the noises fade away and his vision clears from the red-blood layer.

He’s mad at Farlan for making him do this, and the feeling of betrayal tastes so familiar he thinks he’s not insane but amnesic. It doesn’t relieve him. But he’s still in a mild state of panic from last night, and at the sight of white robes and the few cries he hears from time to time from the other rooms, he truly thinks that this, and not his strange suicide attempt, is the end of him. They’re going to lock him up, to say he’s a threat to himself and others, to keep him away from everything he loves.

It isn’t over.

The questions and tests are never-ending, and Farlan doesn’t visit him since he left him there. Levi understands. Farlan has to take care of his little sister, Isabel, too, and it still hurts, but the doctors told him he got violent with him that night. He knew it would happen someday, but he isn’t ready to be all alone in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be.

“It’s as if I’m remembering somebody else’s life,” he tells his therapy group one day after weeks of having the psychiatrist insisting him in participating. “Or I’m a little kid living in a very bad horror film. I’m scared as fuck to sleep because I fear I end up getting a gun and shooting myself with it one night if I’m not able to kill them.”

It’s the first time he talks and everybody is silent, like he just opened the gates to the world’s horrors. While the rest of them had confessed his fears and problems in pitiful, repetitive metaphors, he just blurted out the awful truth he believes in: that their minds suck and there’s no positive way to look at them.

There’s one man that smiles at him. He reminds him of someone else.

When the session ends, the man introduces himself as Erwin. He has a magnetic aura surrounding him, and he looks at Levi with fiery, blue eyes that sparkle as if they knew all of his secrets.

He only sees Erwin at the group sessions, and the dread and excitement every time he meets him is overwhelming. His name sounds exactly like the one he finds himself yelling in his dreams with desperate, raw cries, but he never can quite catch the echo of the answer. Finding a strange comfort in him, Levi starts to go out of his way to talk to him more and more. He invites him to coffee, for a walk, to watch TV, and they quickly become quite close with each other’s presence. Erwin never starts anything, but he doesn’t reject Levi either.

“You say you have horrible night terrors too,” Levi questions him one morning, his eye bags as dark as his coffee. “But you never talk about them. So then why do you keep coming to the group sessions?”

“I don’t want you to hear them,” Erwin replies without missing one beat.

“What?”

Levi thinks he has misheard, but his friend – he’s started to think more of Erwin as a confident, and maybe even as something more – shakes his head and falls silent.

Usually, Erwin is quiet in such a relaxed, collected way that most people would believe he’s a doctor and not a patient if not for his clothes. But this time he’s frowning and frustrated because of something, and Levi feels a stabbing pain in his chest.

“What the fuck, Erwin, you can tell me,” Levi whispers, although they’re all alone sitting on the bed of his room. He suddenly feels afraid. “I’ve told you everything about me, haven’t I?”

Erwin keeps staring at the silent TV with a silent frown, and when he finally gives him an answer, he doesn’t sound like himself. He sounds exactly like someone who has kept quiet far too long.

“Do you want to keep thinking you’re insane, or do you want to have horrible memories in your head from the rest of your life, and not only when you’re sleeping?”

Levi watches him break apart. His calm façade gives way to a frightened grimace, and he hides his face in his hands, breathing in.

“I’ve been looking for you for as long as I have these nightmares. I only came here to make sure you were okay. You keep suffering despite all you’ve done and I can never protect you, not even when the titans aren’t real. Forgive me, Levi.”

The apology is what it takes to the pang in his heart to reach his head. It’s one painful and timeless moment, and then every dream he’s had connects so suddenly he feels numb for a moment.

He remembers the titans.

He remembers the soldiers.

He remembers the impenetrable walls.

He remembers the blood, the bad choices and the betrayals.

He feels the grief of Erwin’s death in seconds and his own existence being reduced to a walking corpse.

Levi finds himself leaning to the body next to him in an attempt to regain his bearings, terrified and relieved all at once. It still takes him a few minutes to comprehend that this isn’t another dream. His eyes are shut because of the brutal headache, and Erwin just looks at him with his hands in fists, like he’s afraid to touch him and break him in more ways than the memories have.

“Thank you,” Levi whispers, a thousand feelings burning in his chest below his laboured breathing. There has always been fear, but now he finds something warmer. “I never got to thank you back.”

Erwin lets out a small, sad laugh that’s more a suppressed sob than anything else.

“I’m sorry for giving up.”

Before gripping Erwin’s arms and before they wrap him in a safe embrace, he briefly wonders if he would have preferred to be insane – he still is, in a way, because he prefers not to leave Erwin alone in the shadows.


End file.
